For one final autumn Saturday, the man who ought to be college football's coach of the year will board one of the blue buses with his team. He'll probably have a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee in one hand, and he'll likely stare silently out the window as the caravan makes that familiar right turn onto Fox Hollow Road.

Will Bill O'Brien allow any sentimentality to invade his thoughts as the majesty of Beaver Stadium comes into view? Will he even pay much notice to the fanatical globs of humans in their thick white attire who line the streets and wave their signs and slip into an almost trance-like worship as the buses grind by?

This could be his last trek to this magical place, so perhaps O'Brien will savor the experience even more than normal. NFL teams have begun sniffing around, and while he will not dignify their interest with any public remark, he must view these past months with a large heaping of satisfaction.

No coach in history has ever been burdened with such an enormous task. O'Brien wasn't only hired to fill the loafers of Joe Paterno, a man who ages ago soared past the mortals and into the mystics. In taking over the head coaching reigns at Penn State University last January, O'Brien was asked to resuscitate a team that had been unfairly gobbled up in one of the most horrific scandals of our time; he was summoned to soothe sponsors, donors and recruits and to assure those who care about the football program that there would be life after the sanctions.

Oh, and a decent season sure wouldn't hurt.

So here are the Nittany Lions now, as this sui generis time comes to a close. Saturday is Senior Day, and that alone ought to squeeze a few extra tears from players who decided to stick around when transferring to a university with far less problems would have been the easier route.

Wisconsin, always a difficult test — last year's embarrassing rout still stings — has the same 7-4 record as the Lions, but that's where the comparisons fade. The Badgers represent the Leaders Division in the Big Ten Conference Championship Game and await only an opponent. This is Penn State's bowl game, its chance to deliver a fierce parting shot to all who mocked the Lions when they were at their nadir.

Coaches at every level are supposed to do a little mind shaping and pruning. O'Brien's challenge went so much deeper. He had to change the way his players thought, to clear their heads of so many heavy ideas and doubts and ugly visions brought about by the pedophile Jerry Sandusky and his evil enablers. These players had zero to do with Sandusky's depravity or the ensuing cover-up and trial, but they nonetheless had to endure torrents of cruel jokes, catcalls and questions.

How many times would a player be asked by family or friends why he chose to stay at THAT university? You know the one — Pedophile U. There's a reason we never heard about a rash of players acting out, of defending their school's honor. O'Brien, the ultimate outsider, convinced them to turn the other cheek.

The hiring of this taciturn New Englander was despised by plenty of fans and former players. They claimed it would take a man whose arteries bled blue to understand the culture and heal a community that was raw and angry. O'Brien could have allowed reporters to trail him as he spoke almost daily at coffee houses and high schools and in the living rooms of families who wondered why they should send their child to THAT university. But if Happy Valley were to recover, if it were to return to some sort of new normal, the mending could only be aided by someone who wasn't a megalomaniac, someone who might not have been raised in central Pennsylvania, but who respected its static charms, its powerful loyalties.

O'Brien will never be the sort who feeds the cameras. For that reason alone, the locals ought to throw him a party.

His mid-week press conferences are hardly folksy gather-arounds. He's known to answer even soft questions with the spot-on imitation soberness of his old boss, Bill Belichick. But a few days ago, when the subject of his senior class arose, a lump caught in O'Brien's throat.

"It's hard to put into words what this senior class means to this football program, this athletic department and this university. These are young guys (who have) been through a lot," he said. "They've been through the death of their former head coach, a legendary coach. They went thorough all the things that went on off the field. … They hung tough."

From an 0-2 start came more whispers about more players transferring. Senior running back Bill Belton was injured; field-goal attempts were missed. The loss to Ohio State hurt most. But in between there were those five consecutive victories, and an offense that caused old-timers to wonder if they had been transported to another place and time. It was so cutting edge, so diametric to decades of the staid run-first mentality of the previous century.

Bring some noisemakers to O'Brien's party, to salute the innovator who dared usher in change.

Quarterback Matt McGloin, the walk-on who for season after season chomped silently on the sidelines under the Paterno regime, has reworked the school's record books via O'Brien's pro-style passing attack. After finishing with three catches last season, sophomore wideout Allen Robinson has also shattered school records, while Zach Zwinak, last year's third-string fullback, might finish the season with more rushing yards than Silas Redd, who in the scandal's wake transferred to Southern Cal. It's pretty hard to mock a team when it's blowing past the pylons.

"(O'Brien) and Coach (Charlie) Fisher have done a great job of teaching me how to play quarterback the correct way," McGloin, the Big Ten Conference's top passer, recently told reporters. "They have so much experience that it can't help but rub off on you."

How does so much good happen to a team that lost 10 offensive starters before the season began? How does it score an average of 10 points more every game than previous years? How does it keep setting records even while under the thick shadow of NCAA sanctions? Somehow O'Brien got his players to see beyond history and limitations and buy into what he knew could be.

"He was completely honest with us and told us it was going to be difficult. He knew what we were facing. He didn't pretend like it was going to be a lot of fun," linebacker Glenn Carson said. "Coach didn't tell us what we wanted to hear, he told us what we needed to hear and that was the truth. That truth helped us form a really strong bond."

Eventually O'Brien will share his future plans with them — possibly even in the emotional glow of this final Autumn Saturday, after Penn State's extraordinary season comes to an end. Eight years remain on his contract, but no matter the rosy sheen, the reality is still harsh. The Lions are not eligible for the postseason for the next four years. In 2014, the number of scholarships allowed will be slashed by 20.

He certainly couldn't be faulted for heeding the NFL's siren call, for returning to his recent roots.

Last season, O'Brien served as Patriots offensive coordinator. The Jacksonville Jaguars viewed him as a top candidate for its head coach, but even that mess seems minor compared to what he faced in State College.

A win against Wisconsin would seal Penn State's final record at 8-4, a beyond astounding accomplishment considering all that transpired in the darkest offseason imaginable.

At a chic dinner in Houston on Jan. 17, the winner of the Paul "Bear" Bryant Coach of the Year will be announced. Eighteen coaches are on the final list, including the 43-year-old O'Brien. Back in 1986, Paterno was the award's first recipient.

That was another world, a different lifetime.

If O'Brien's name isn't announced this time around, we might as well rip up the definition of coach and start from scratch. Nobody's fulfilled the job requirements quite like this.